Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer UNC front­lin­ers and MPs, who in 2019 un­suc­cess­ful­ly at­tempt­ed to get par­ty leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to have uni­ty talks with oth­er par­ties, have “dissed” the call she made on Mon­day for uni­ty with small­er par­ties.

Dur­ing a meet­ing in San­gre Grande, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC was open to uni­ty arrange­ments with oth­er par­ties to con­test the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion and talks were on with some. She pro­ject­ed that if suc­cess­ful for the LG elec­tion, that could be the first step to re­mov­ing the PNM in the gen­er­al elec­tions.

It’s con­firmed that Gary Grif­fith’s Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) and Garvin Nicholas’ Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (MND) are talk­ing to the UNC. But sev­er­al small­er par­ties haven’t been con­tact­ed or aren’t in­ter­est­ed in link­ing with UNC. (See oth­er sto­ry)

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, for­mer UNC ac­tivist Dr De­vant Ma­haraj (now Cana­da-based) slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s call, not­ing she “blanked” ef­forts in 2019 by her front­line MPs for uni­ty talks with all op­posed to the PNM.

De­scrib­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s cur­rent bid as “vac­u­ous and hol­low,” Ma­haraj stat­ed: “In Jan­u­ary 2019, then MP Gan­ga Singh, sup­port­ed by Fuad Khan, Ra­mona Ram­di­al, Vas­ant Bharath, my­self, and oth­ers, went to UNC’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly to ta­ble a res­o­lu­tion to be­gin talks with all op­posed to the PNM, to dis­cuss a pos­si­ble coali­tion or al­liance be­fore the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions.”

He re­count­ed how Singh was pre­vent­ed from rais­ing the res­o­lu­tion by the chair­man of pro­ceed­ings and the res­o­lu­tion was still­born.

Ma­haraj added, “Sub­se­quent me­dia head­lines read ‘Kam­la: No Coali­tion for UNC’ and this has been the my­opic po­si­tion of the Kam­la-led UNC of go­ing it alone and los­ing it alone. Sup­port­ers must now ask ‘What has changed Kam­la?’ It’s ap­par­ent that the drunk­en lust for pow­er has ap­par­ent­ly changed the tune of UNC’s lead­er­ship.”

He said it was no sur­prise that var­i­ous small­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties prompt­ly re­fused her plea.

The ap­peal lacks sub­stance and is de­void of any re­al sig­nif­i­cance,” Ma­haraj added.

Ma­haraj said it was clear, “... All the Kam­la-led UNC wants to do is to use the small­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties to ar­ti­fi­cial­ly cre­ate an il­lu­sion of some sem­blance of po­lit­i­cal uni­ty in hope of win­ning Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion and then per­haps ride that mo­men­tum in­to the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.”

“The on­ly so­lu­tion for the UNC to have any chance at any elec­tion, bin­go, or raf­fle against the PNM is to jet­ti­son Kam­la and the kinder­garten MPs and Sen­a­tors. Giv­en UNC’s treat­ment of the MSJ, COP, NJAC and TOP when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was the gov­ern­ment, why would any­one put God out their mind and unite with Kam­la?” Ma­haraj added.

Vasant Bharath

SHASTRI BOODAN

Mean­while, for­mer UNC min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the pub­lic may no longer have pa­tience with such coali­tions.

“The peo­ple are fed-up of coali­tions of con­ve­nience. It’s hu­mil­i­at­ing for UNC sup­port­ers that af­ter 34 years of be­ing a na­tion­al par­ty, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar had to go cap in hand beg­ging small par­ties to join. Af­ter eight years in Op­po­si­tion, the UNC has done lit­tle to noth­ing to at­tract peo­ple out­side of its base and failed to mo­bilise and in­spire peo­ple to join them,” he said.

“The UNC’s al­ready re­moved it­self from To­ba­go and it will now be­come more parochial if it has to give up East-West cor­ri­dor seats to oth­er par­ties to con­test for LG polls,” Bharath added.

Dr Faud Khan

Fuad Khan, a for­mer UNC health min­is­ter, said Per­sad-Bisses­sar need­ed to fix the par­ty in­ter­nal­ly first.

“Kam­la’s os­tracised all her se­nior mem­bers and not made one ef­fort to reach out to them. So it’s a joke to talk to small­er par­ties which don’t car­ry the po­lit­i­cal cur­ren­cy of the peo­ple she’s not kept in­volved. I won’t go back to her. I’ll al­ways help the UNC—but it de­pends on who’s leader,” Khan said.

Like her for­mer PP col­leagues, Ra­mona Ram­di­al be­lieves Per­sad-Bisses­sar is des­per­ate.

“Her call was an emp­ty, des­per­ate, in­sin­cere at­tempt. Uni­ty is the way to go, as every­body knows UNC is much weak­er than be­fore. How­ev­er, we’d called for uni­ty in 2019 and she said UNC would go it alone. So now, small­er par­ties don’t trust her words,” Ram­di­al said.

“The UNC has done its home­work and re­alised they may lose Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion and this is the new move. But it’s too late and peo­ple see it as emp­ty rhetoric and a ploy to gath­er a few votes in mar­gin­al ar­eas.”